After five-plus years of an unprecedented post-pandemic travel boom, warning signs are flashing: Travel demand is tapering off.
For travelers on the hunt for bargains, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
From a resurgence in dirt-cheap economy deals – both domestically and across the Atlantic ocean – to a surprising slew of peak summer travel deals to notoriously hard-to-book premium cabin awards suddenly popping up for travelers with credit card points or airline miles still stashed away, the tide is turning for travelers. The floodgates for deals aren't wide-open just yet – this isn't an early 2020-level slowdown by any stretch. But something is undeniably shifting.
Consider this:
- Domestic flights prices have bottomed out through the spring and even into summer, with roundtrip fares under $100 becoming more and more common
- Nonstop flights to Europe for around $500 (and sometimes less) keep popping up including over summer – unthinkable just a year ago
- We recently sent a Thrifty Traveler Premium members a $1,000 business class “mistake fare” to Europe … that likely wasn't a mistake at all
- Business class has gotten harder to book using miles over the last few years, but that may be changing based on a recent surge of deals to fly United Polaris business class to Europe or Cathay Pacific business class to Southeast Asia
- … and even to Australia, of all places. Long one of the hardest destinations to book an award ticket in a lie-flat seat, we found and sent four Qantas business class alerts last week alone
- For the first time in years, we recently found wide-open award space to book Cathay Pacific First Class all the way from New York City (JFK) to Hong Kong (HKG) and back
We dive deep into this recent trend on our latest episode of the podcast – check it out on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Now, that doesn't mean every single flight is cheaper than a year ago. Airfare is not a monolith: It's made up of tens of millions of fares between cities near and far. And pricing is changing by the second. Some go up, some go down … and some go way down.
But the big numbers back up this emerging trend. Monthly inflation reports from the federal government show average airfare fell by 4% in February and again by 5.3% in March – the largest two month downswing we've seen in a long time. And prices are dropping at a time when fares typically increase as Americans start planning their summer trips en masse.
So what's going on? And why, if so many Americans are (understandably) stressed out about the economy, do we insist on seeing the bright side?
Travel Hit a Turning Point
If there's one thing that dictates flight deals – whether you're on the lookout for cheaper prices or award availability you can book with your miles – it's the simple law of supply and demand.
Too much supply, and airlines will cut prices to fill seats. When demand is higher – like over the peak summer months or holiday travel weeks – airlines charge more … because they can. And for much of the last five years, demand has outpaced supply as “revenge travel” spurred an explosion in travel demand.
After slashing schedules and grounding planes at the outset of the pandemic, airlines faced a new problem by 2021: They couldn't get back to full strength fast enough. Those growing pains led to several years of skyrocketing fares as well as hellish disruptions across the entire airline industry – including a catastrophic Southwest meltdown around Christmas 2022 and Delta's own embarrassing collapse last summer.
But travel demand just kept growing. All 10 of the 10 busiest travel days in the country's history were set in 2024, according to data from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
Just over a quarter into 2025, it's clear something is shifting.
Airlines and their CEOs began sounding the alarm in the early spring, warning investors that bookings were slowing down amid economic uncertainty. Both Delta and United have since confirmed it, announcing their plans to trim domestic flights and retire additional aircraft later this year to right-size supply with sagging travel demand.
“With broad economic uncertainty around global trade, growth has largely stalled,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said earlier this month.
While executives at both airlines insist the slowdown is almost entirely in domestic and corporate travel, there are signs it is spreading.
Several recent datapoints from Canadian airlines and online travel agencies suggest bookings from Canada south to the U.S. are trending down … perhaps precipitously. While Delta says its transatlantic ticket sales for this summer and fall are outpacing last year, data from aviation analytics company Cirium suggests that bookings on all carriers are down for the peak summer compared to 2024. Even Delta's own close partner carrier, Virgin Atlantic, has said it's seen bookings from the U.S. to London slipping after a strong start to the year.
“When we say signals of a slowdown in demand … we've had weeks where it's been flat, we've had a few weeks where it's been negative,” Virgin's Chief Financial Officer, Oli Byers, told reporters, according to Reuters. This was further backed up by recent data from the International Trade Administration – a U.S. government agency which provides details on visitor arrivals to the United States. The latest figures show tourist visas for travelers entering the U.S. were down nearly 18% in March from the year prior. That's not nothing…
Whether this is a wobble that will bounce back with a trade war resolution or the start of something deeper is a question for economists – not your favorite flight deal service.
“We’re not sure how long it’s gonna be but we’re confident it’s not going to be elongated,” Bastian, of Delta, said.
Recent see-sawing on the stock market won't help calm consumers who are apparently too spooked to book the next big trip. But long before profits drop or airlines slash their schedules, they start discounting fares to fill empty seats on planes that were previously going out full.
And we've been seeing that for months.
With Cash or Points, Flight Deals Abound
Our flight deal gurus and award analysts dig up deals for Thrifty Traveler Premium members 24/7/365. They can hardly keep up lately.
In retrospect, things clearly hit a turning point sometime in February.
It started with an unprecedented amount of dirt-cheap domestic deals for this spring and even summer. Now, sub-$100 domestic fares are rare but not unheard of. But from Chicago to Las Vegas (LAS) to Portland (PDX) and even Los Angeles (LAX), they've been easier to find – and more widespread – than any time in recent memory as airlines started scrambling to fill empty seats.
At just $78 roundtrip from several cities, these fares to Chicago-Midway (MDW) from nearly a dozen cities across the country didn't just set a new record-low – they set off some alarm bells that something was changing in the world of travel.
Just to the north, we've lost track of what we consider a “good price” to Canada thanks to sub-$300 roundtrip fares to Vancouver (YVR), Montreal (YUL), and this one to Calgary (YYC).
But despite what airline executives are saying, the deals extend far beyond North America. After several years of record-setting travel to Europe in a row (and some eye-popping fares as a result), things changed in late February. That's when we found these nonstop Delta fares to Amsterdam (AMS) and Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG) for less than half the normal price.
That wasn't a one-off, either. When Delta is selling its brand-new nonstop to Copenhagen (CPH) from a fortress hub like Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) for under $600 – in August, no less! – that tells you something. These are not normal times – nor are they normal fares.
Booking a lie-flat business class seat all the way to Australia or New Zealand is typically close to impossible, no matter how many points you've got. But Qantas has been opening the floodgates lately, making it easier than we've ever seen to book business class awards to Sydney (SYD), Melbourne (MEL), and Brisbane (BNE) using transferable credit card points. After going months without seeing more than just a single seat or two available across the whole calendar, we sent Thrifty Traveler Premium members four alerts last week with wide-open award space.
But a pair of recent stellar deals has us convinced that the entire landscape for flight deals has changed before our eyes.
It started with some unprecedented award space to book Cathay Pacific First Class from New York City (JFK) for 160,000 points each way – even less by tacking on a connection in business class onward elsewhere in Southeast Asia or all the way to Australia or New Zealand. While that's a good chunk of points, any availability whatsoever to book Cathay's cushiest cabin is tough to come by … especially all the way from New York, where it's been years since we've seen more than a shred of award space on this route.
It's so rare, we slapped it with a patented Unicorn emoji and sent a text alert to book before it disappeared. Days later, we slid back in our Thrifty Traveler Premium members' DMs with another unthinkable deal.
Lufthansa briefly sold business class fares from the U.S. to Europe – again, including peak summer availability in August – not for the normal price of $4,000 or more roundtrip … but for just over $1,000 total.
But was it an accident – a bona fide mistake fare? I can't say for sure … but based upon how the fare itself was constructed (there were no surcharges missing – a frequent culprit when airlines actually mess up), I don't think so. Plus, these tickets are still alive and well 10-plus days later.
In isolation, we might write off either of these flight deals as a fluke. But set against a backdrop of deal after deal after deal – not to mention airlines' ongoing anxiety about what's going on in the economy – they're the cherry on top of a recent trend…
… until another cherry of a deal comes along. And while we might not be economists, we're banking on even more flight deals right around the corner.
Bottom Line
Travel is at a turning point.
The days of “revenge travel” are long gone and after five-plus years of uninterrupted travel growth, travel demand is finally turning the opposite way. There's no telling whether this wobble will turn into a deeper plunge – and if it does, what that means for travel is anyone's guess.
But for now, there's a major silver lining. We're more bullish about flight deals than we've been in years – and you should be too.
